A Heart Ablaze
by Caelyn-Forever
Summary: Whiskermoon is a young warrior who is struggling to train is apprentice. However, his life takes a violent change when StarClan sends him a vision... One-Shot.


***EDIT* Something happened when I posted this story and half of it is in italics…I have no clue how that happened..I'll try to fix it.**

Whiskermoon padded into the den quietly, trying not to disturb the warriors who were at rest. He was terribly exhausted from training his apprentice, Woodpaw, all day long.

"Woodpaw wearin' ya out?" a voice mewed.

Whiskermoon glanced over and noticed Fangclaw glaring up at him.

"Hmm?" Fangclaw replied, "is Woodpaw driving you crazy yet?"

Whiskermoon nodded and collapsed from fatigue. The audacious apprentice was too much of a hassle. It was like taking care of a baby badger!

"I knew my son wouldn't have been the best apprentice for you to train," said Fangclaw, "considering he's your first one. But I'm sure he'll learn a lot from you. You are a great warrior, after all."

Whiskermoon felt a sense of pride that Fangclaw, one of the most respected cats in the clan, called him a great warrior.

The slender whitish grey tabby tom curled up and fell asleep quickly.

Whiskermoon felt another cat nipping on his ear.

"Wake up wake up wake up!" yowled Woodpaw. "You promised me that you would take me to the DarkClan border today!"

Whiskermoon sighed as he awoke to see the young, eager face of his apprentice.

"Yes," he mewed tiredly, "I did indeed promise you that. Let me eat and then we'll go."

After wolfing down an entire vole, Whiskermoon led Woodpaw into the forest.

"What's the border like?" Woodpaw asked with a grin of excitement.  
"It's not much," replied Whiskermoon. "It's just like any old border."

"One day," said Woodpaw as he climbed onto a log, "one day I'll be a great warrior! Or even deputy of the clan! Or even the leader!"

Whiskermoon stopped dead in his tracks.

_If that rowdy cat ever becomes leader, _he thought, _I sure hope I'm dead._

Whiskermoon turned to Woodpaw, but he then noticed his apprentice had vanished. He began to panic.

"Woodpaw!" he yowled, "come out! This is no time to play!" But there was no answer.

The grey tom began to race through the forest, calling out Woodpaw's name. There was never any response.

"Fangclaw is going to kill me," he thought out loud, "once he knows that _I _lost his son."

Whiskermoon then found himself at the edge of the forest. He glared into the distance, where he saw two legs and their dogs.

He scrambled back into the forest, yet he kept an eye on the two legs.

_Do they have Woodpaw? _he thought.

As he observed the two legs with great interest, he noticed something; they had a fire.

Fires were usually deadly disasters that rarely occurred naturally in the forest. But this fire was trapped in a pit of stones, controlled by the two legs. Whiskermoon was awed that the ugly, furless two legs could control fire.

The tom crept away and toward the clan camp, hoping his apprentice had just gone back to camp.

On his way back, he stopped to take a drink at a small pond. As he bent down to take a sip, a vision came before his eyes.

The vision was of two ravenous dogs chasing Whiskermoon through the forest. They chased him into the two legs' yard. There was no where to run…no where to turn. The dogs chased Whiskermoon right into the two legs' fire.

_Fear death by fire, _the wind seemed to echo.

"StarClan!?" Whiskermoon said, still horrified by the vision in the water. "Is that you who sent me the vision!?"

No response.

Whiskermoon ignored the vision and the voice, for an elder once told him that StarClan worked in odd ways.

"That will never happen," the tom reassured himself, "I'll make sure that I'll never go around two leg fires. As long as I ignore them it'll never happen."

For the next few suns, the vision Whiskermoon saw in the water haunted his dreams. He ignored it as usual.

The next moon, Woodpaw and Whiskermoon went out into the forest with Redsong and her apprentice, Tigerpaw.

The four cats came to a spacious clearing, and Whiskermoon and Redsong sat down on a rock while the apprentices trained with each other.

"It's nice for apprentices to train together," replied Redsong. "They're not as bored when they train with cats their age."

"I agree with you," Whiskermoon meowed. "Woodpaw was getting all over my nerves. It'll be good for him to release some of his energy."

Whiskermoon noticed Redsong when her ear twitched.

"What's that smell?" she muttered while looking toward the distance.

A fiery inferno engulfed the trees and reached for the skies like a newly awakened spirit who was hungry for revenge. Revenge on the forest.

"Fire!" Redsong yowled.

The two apprenticed ceased their training and began to bolt for the clan camp.

"We're surrounded!" Tigerpaw cried out.

Whiskermoon felt sick and a shiver ran down his spine as he began to realize his hellish vision was coming true.

"Over there!" Redsong mewed. There was a small tunnel that lead to a stream on the other side of the clan camp.

Redsong and Tigerpaw glided over to it and ran through.

Whiskermoon began to bolt toward it as well, but he then noticed that Woodpaw wasn't with him.

He turned toward his apprentice, who was still in the clearing. He was traumatized; awed by the roaring flames.

"Woodpaw!' Whiskermoon screamed, "get over here now!" He then realized that Woodpaw couldn't hear over the flames.

There was a terrible noise, and a massive branch fell from the tallest tree and split the clearing into two sections.

_I can save myself, _Whiskermoon thought. _Or save both of us, and possibly risk my life._

In a split second the tom knew what he must do.

The grey cat leaped over the fallen branch.

"Whiskermoon!" Woodpaw said as he scrambled up to the warrior, "I'm scared."

"So am I," Whiskermoon responded while planning out their escape.

"It's okay for a warrior to be scared, right?" Woodpaw asked while looking up at his mentor.

"Of course," the tom said. "All cats get scared. Even leaders and deputies."

Whiskermoon looked around and saw that the flames were getting larger. Their chances of escape were very little.

"Hey Woodpaw?"

"Yeah?"

"Remember when I told you clan leaders are often afraid?"

"Yes."

"Well, we're going to play a game. You're a clan leader, and I'm your deputy who's going to help you, because deputies always help leaders. Just be brave and close your eyes."

"…Okay…"

Whiskermoon grabbed the small apprentice by the scruff of the neck and tossed him over the fiery log.

"Did you make it over there?" Whiskermoon yelled over the flames.

"Yeah!" said Woodpaw.

"Go!" demanded Whiskermoon. "Go through that tunnel on the left. I'll come catch up with you later. There's a path I made over here when I was apprentice. It leads to a place not far from camp."

"You mean the one to the right?" Woodpaw mewed. "I can see it from here; it's blocked by tree branches."

Whiskermoon turned to the right and saw that what the apprentice said was true; it was blocked.

Swallowing his fear, the warrior knew he had to accept his fate.

"Woodpaw," replied Whiskermoon with sadness in his voice. "…Ask my friend Hawkfeather to be your new mentor. He'll teach you what you need to know."

"You can't say that!" Woodpaw cried. "You have to make it! You gotta! Jump into the fire! You'll make it, I know you will!"

Whiskermoon, who was disparate for survival, leaped into the fire.

Woodpaw ran as he saw his mentor jumping. He knew that Whiskermoon would follow him into the tunnel.

When he arrived back at camp, it began to rain.

"That was a close one, huh?" Woodpaw grinned. He turned and saw Whiskermoon was gone.

"Where's Whiskermoon?" Redsong asked as she approached Woodpaw.

"I dunno," the apprentice said. "I thought he was right behind me the entire time."

Redsong dropped her gaze to the ground and sadly padded back to the warriors' den.

"He's not dead!" Woodpaw yowled at Redsong, "he can't be! I saw him jump over the fire!"

After the rain shower had ceased and the flames had disappeared from the distance, Woodpaw and Tigerpaw set out to find Whiskermoon.

"Do you think he got lost?" Tigerpaw asked Woodpaw. The young tom was to melancholy to respond.

The two soon came to the clearing where the fire had happened, and Woodpaw was heartbroken to see the body that lay there.

"Whiskermoon!" he cried. The couple ran up to the tom's once light grey body, which was now almost black from all the ash.

"Oh, Whiskermoon," Tigerpaw said softly.

Woodpaw gazed into Whiskermoon's blue eyes, which no longer glittered like they once had.

The brown apprentice, his young heart filled with rage and fury, began to curse StarClan.

"I loath you, StarClan!" he yowled toward the sky. His anger then turned to tears. "Why did you have to take the life of the only cat who respected me!? Everyone else thinks I'm too audacious…he was the only warrior I cared for! And you had to take his life!"

"You shouldn't curse StarClan like that," Tigerpaw whispered, "they have no control over things like this."

Woodpaw didn't say another word for the rest of the night, for the two apprentices sat a vigil with Whiskermoon.

Another moon passed, and Hawkfeather finished mentoring Woodpaw. The once zany apprentice became sullen and sad. He lost his apatite and hadn't had a real conversation in forever. His father told him that a warrior always learns to let go, but Woodpaw just simply didn't have the heart to.

The sun before Woodpaw became a warrior, he padded into the clan leader's den.

"Eaglestar?" he asked tentatively.

"Yes?" the mighty tom responded.

"I have a request. Even though I'm not really supposed to ask what my warrior name should be, I think I have to."

"You have to?"

"Yes," Woodpaw mewed, "may I ask if my warrior name can be Woodwhisker?"

"Why Woodwhisker?"

Woodpaw shot a glance down at the ground, then proudly responded, "I would like to be named Woodwhisker in memory of Whiskermoon, the brave warrior who jumped into a fire."


End file.
